Why am i so passionate about the sales funnel? Why do I keep going on about the sales funnel’s importance for your mlm business? This video reveals all!
For more information and to kick start your sales funnel check out my free funnel audio training
Firstly, I sincerely want to put two sides of this issue forward as this is one of the continually hotly debated topics amongst traditional network marketers and online network marketers, but at the same time I will be giving my personal account and obviously my point of view.
Now, I come from a unique standpoint in the fact that I started off as a traditional network marketer, moved to become an online network marketer then directed back to traditional but now am back online. So it’s fair to say that I have seen both sides of network marketing retrospectively and in context.
As a personal opinion I believe that the industry does hold the key for a lot of people to creating financial freedom for themselves. There is no other business or investment that is so accessible in terms of time or money commitment and that holds both the key to the success and failure for everyone within the industry.
When I first got involved in this industry, I immediately saw the potential and the capability that this business model has for anyone willing to put in the work to make it work. However as many have experienced it doesn’t take long for reality when trying to build a network marketing business.
No matter what way you look at it there are very few people that are interested or motivated to grow this business model. Many people have heard of it, a percentage a willing to take a look, but of those willing to take a look about 5% make any sort of meaningful income out of it. The question is why?
Let’s be honest for a second, 95% of the turnover in this industry comes from traditional network marketing, so its still very much ahead of online methods. Therefore really traditional network marketing, at this point in time must shoulder the blame for these bad statistics, because surely not every one of the 95% that doesn’t succeed are the wrong people? My point here isn’t to point the finger at traditional network marketing, it is to highlight the fact that something is wrong, these statistics speak volumes and you simply can’t dismiss these people as the wrong people.
As I said above I moved away from online methods to traditional network marketing for a small amount of time for a number of reasons, but primarily it was going through the internet marketing learning process alone and because I was convinced by my upline that its not duplicatable. Ah ha! That right there is the biggest argument that traditional network marketers use that falls outside their system.
After giving traditional network marketing another concerted effort and evaluating this way of doing business I began to realise some very important things. Firstly the people that are successful and I mean truly successful have methods of attracting people to them. Secondly, very few people “prospects” are actual quality people that you have to talk to. Thirdly, you waste an incredible amount of time making phone calls, travelling to destinations, attending meetings, coaching your propectings, evaluating your business etc.
The statistics of those who are going to build a network marketing business and those that don’t just don’t add up. Why would you possible waste so much time with people who are never going to do anything? You’re meant to leverage the system, but I still see so many people spending more than full time hours trying to get their business off the ground, and yet most of their team fades away.
For most people this sad reality is simply enough and the fact of the matter is it was for me as well, additionally I had seen a better way and I headed back to it. The reality is that the internet has been around in a significant way for business in general for at least a decade, and yet very few companies within the network marketing industry have truly moved to embrace it. It has only been the moves of a couple of true leaders that have given hope to many struggling traditional network marketers, and hence have been the catalyst for inspiring me to inspire others as well.
Of those that fail traditionally, there are undoubtedly a large proportion that fail to see and treat their network marketing business as a real business and this is another pitfall with the traditional network marketing model. While following a system is important, following it completely blindly is detrimental to the ability for people to take ownership. Instead of making any decisions or being innovative, any new distributor is simply encouraged to put their list together, shut up and follow their upline’s instructions as to who to speak to and when to speak to them. The fact of the matter is, there are people who you instinctually feel it is appropriate or inappropriate to speak to about this business model and you shouldn’t feel pressure to speak to those that you don’t feel it is appropriate.
Although I have clearly found that there are a lot of negatives to the traditional network marketing model, the overwhelming positive that I have found is that having direct contact with people and surrounding yourself in real life with positive people is very important. This aspect is obviously something that the internet cannot replace and where traditional networking has a clear advantage of online network marketing.
Additionally the learning curve of becoming successful online is harder, there’s more to learn, there’s a lot of different trainings out there and without direction you can jump from training to training and end up with a massive headache without anything to show for it.
So you really must way up these pros and cons when ultimately making your decision about how to build your business. As a traditional business owner I know how much of an impact the internet is having on business and feel that some point in time the internet is going to have a massive impact on network marketing, as we already see it doing. The fact of the matter is, online network marketing is very much still in it’s infancy and that’s exciting.
In terms of overcoming the negatives of online network marketing, if your network marketing company has offline events, go to them, not every week but attend the key ones, like weekend seminars etc. Also start to attend other business seminars in particularly internet marketing events. Start to think and act like a business owner and therefore invest in offline events for your personal development. The next important aspect is to have a mentor or accountability partner for keeping you on track online and also helping you with your direction. You would do this in any traditional or network marketing business and this is therefore important for your online network marketing business.
Ultimately the decision is up to you, but no matter what make the decision for you, not your upline, not your company, but for you. For anymore information, to stay in contact with me, to get notified when I’m mentoring people or to get my free training feel free to click here.
Through working with my team and consulting with a number of people in the home based business industry, I often find it surprising that a lot of people within the network marketing industry don’t entirely understand the importance of an online sales funnel. However you look around at other industries and this seems to be a phenomenon that is congruent across both traditional and network marketing industries, with one important exception. In a traditional business sense the business owner has a service or product that they are offering, and hence they have a part of their sales funnel in place.
The underlying tendency for a network marketer online is to approach online the exactly the same way as they would approach offline MLM building. This is the ultimate cause of the problem, in other words there is a lack of strategy when it comes to their online sales funnel. When you look at offline network building strategies, it solely concentrates on the number of people you “expose” and therefore sponsor.
Let me tell you right now that these figures are almost irrelevant to your online network marketing sales funnel. When you are moving your business online, there are more figures you need to worry about, but this will ultimately increase the quality and quantity of people you sponsor. Initially you need to stop worrying about the number of people you are sponsoring, but instead, what process you are going to take your prospects through, what value you are going to offer, what makes you unique and how you are going to deliver that value. In other words you want to set your business up to the point where people are asking to join you instead of you having to chase people and find prospects.
Again this all comes back to your ability to deliver value; if you concentrate on delivering value then you can truly write your own ticket to a success MLM business and a successful network marketing sales funnel. The key ingredients you need as part of your sales funnel are free, low end, mid range and high end products, sponsoring people in your MLM should always be the last step in your funnel.
Before you continue you need to understand the key elements in a sales funnel, so make sure you check out my free audio training if you haven’t already done so, with much more exciting and free trainings to come 
.
One of the most critical aspects to long term success in internet marketing, and in this respect in regards to network marketing online, is testing, tracking and tweaking your sales funnel. In particular, I wanted to give you an idea of why you need to be using one of Google’s lesser known online tools, Google Website Optimizer, with particular emphasis on testing your sales funnel.
Obviously when you have set out to start creating your online network marketing sales funnel you have done considerable research into your competition and target market, you’ve developed some highly targeted products and you’ve set up a process for your prospects to move through. However we all know that your target market, competition and business in general NEVER remain the same. There are always forces that act upon them that will change what they are looking for or how they operate. It is for this reason that you have a duty to YOUR network marketing business and in particular to your sales funnel to evolve and move with your target market, but stay ahead of your competition.
To stay ahead you need a sales funnel that ultimately converts better than your competition, and the way to do that is test everything you are doing, down to the minute details of your squeeze pages, sales pages and website in general. That’s exactly the mindset you need to take into your online network marketing.
So essentially what Google Website Optimizer allows you to do is run different versions of your different website pages, and each time it will randomly alternate the different versions of that page. What I recommend is taking one variable of the website, e.g. the title (it could be the content of the title or it could be the colour of the title) and then test your existing title with one or two alternatives. From there you wait until each page has been visited 400 times (why 400? Good question. But someone has actually tested how many website visitors you need to make an informed decision about what’s better and 400 come up as the key number).
In addition to Google Website Optimizer you should then be testing conversions with Google Analytics, therefore you will be able to differentiate how many opt ins came from the different versions of your website. In essence all you are doing is taking one element within your sales page or squeeze page and trying to improve it by testing different versions against each other. Very simple concept. Very few people do it and hence why so many people have in effective online network marketing sales funnels.
For more sales funnel training information got your free 20mins audio presenation.
Here it is, my insane June Challenge. Can it be done? Will I succeed? Do you want to see how accomplish these goals at the end?
Here is some insight into what i’ve got coming up.
Ok, so you’ve heard me talk about sales funnels for a long time, in particular how these relate to the home based business or MLM industry. Let me start off by saying that the shift of people doing network marketing offline to online is definitely underway. I actually see old school marketers attempting to do things online because they can see that there is leverage there, the problem is that they are still trying to learn from their company how to do it, yet their company has no or little idea either.
However there is a growing trend towards attraction marketing and self branding which is giving networkers the opportunity to brand themselves and create a business for themselves online. The major problem is that very few are truly capitalising on this opportunity within their sales funnels. A true sales funnel in any business sense has in essence different levels where people enter your business, consume and continue to move through and consume some more. The BIGGEST problem within the MLM industry at the moment is not enough people are capitilising on this or giving enough value for people to consume.
Think about this… Think about someone who is a guru of online MLM. Do they have their own products? Do they have multiple products? The answer is yes and yes! Now think about someone who is a good networker but not a guru. Do they have their own products? Chances are they probably don’t or they are just starting to catch on that they need them so they are starting to put them out.
The people that are making waves online have something different from the field, they’ve actually have their own product or service that they are delivering to the market. However the reason why they are so successful is that they’ve actually kept this secret, because they have so many people who use their system solely or are sole affiliates of them.
I’m not saying that their products are no good and i’m not saying don’t affiliate market. In fact quite on the contrary. These guys are good because they’ve found out what’s missing in the market, created something to fill that need and then marketed like crazy and managed to get big followings.
So really, what i’m saying is that the critical element missing in 99% of online mlmers sales funnel’s is simple, their own product! If you purely just affiliate market or use a replicated system what you are in fact doing is allowing another leader to upstage you and market to your prospects. They become the authority and not you. You want to make it big? Great! Become the authority, talk to your market, come up with a solution and then market it!
Mark Blomeley
P.S. Creating your product seems like a whole lot of effort doesn’t it? Well, I’m going to show you how easy it actually is, but not only that, create a sales funnel that can absolutely blow the socks off your competition. If you want to be the next in line for a big pay day sign up for my free audio, then i will be in contact regarding my EXCLUSIVE sales funnel training launch!
If you haven’t read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ by Robert Kiyosaki yet, then this book is a must and should be the next book you read. Why? Honestly this is the best book for getting a true understanding of financial independence and personal financial management that I have read.
One of the primary concepts that Robert introduces into the book is the cash flow quadrant and this is want I want to discuss and interpret for you today, because it gives you an enormous perspective about where your finances are at now and what you need to do to gain financial independence. Here is what the Quadrant looks like:
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E Employee |
B Business Owner |
|
S Self Employed |
I Investor |
When you get out of school/university and you begin to earn money, there are generally two options for you, that is you become an employee (getting a job) or you become self employed (you buy yourself a job). So you begin your career on the left side of the quadrant, in other words you trade your time for money and therefore everything you are earning is active income.
If you think about it at any stage if you are unable to work for a long period of time or you simply choose not to work then your income stops completely. Financial independence is therefore gained through passive income with the two options there being to be a business owner or an investor, i.e. gaining cash flow through the right side of the quadrant. Therefore if you don’t work you still get paid. Sounds good doesn’t it? I bet I have your attention now : ).
The big question is how do you move yourself into the right side of the quadrant? Ok, first of all you have the option of becoming a business owner, ok so you have to start a business right? Well yes you can do that, but chances are you become a statistic, believe me I’m walking talking proof of this. There is a massive difference between being a business owner and being self employed. Being a business owner means your business runs COMPLETELY without you, if you go away from your business for 12 months then you business would still be going if you’re a business owner. If not you’re self employed.
You’ll have to excuse my bluntness in this post but I really want to demonstrate true financial independence. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that 85% of small businesses close within 5 years, in other words well over 85% of small business owners are self employed, not business owners. If you want to become a business owner then realistically you are looking at years and years of hard work.
The other option is to become an investor and this is the way that Robert became financially independent. Ultimately this too takes quite a long time because you need to take a percentage of your active income and invest it into property, shares, businesses etc to the point that you can replace your active income. (By the way the house you own and you live in is not an investment because ultimately it’s not giving you any cash flow.)
Let me give you an example, if you consider a house/unit that you have rented or are renting at the moment, perhaps you are paying $300 per week for a unit that is worth $400,000 (this is not unrealistic at all in Australian property terms at the moment). Perhaps you are earning $52,000 per year, in other words in this scenario you would have to own (and own outright) $1,333,333 worth of real estate to replace your existing income. Ouch!
I certainly didn’t want to scare you with this post but rather to provoke you to really assess where you spend your money and where you spend your time and potentially give you some perspective into Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. Additionally this is one reason why the home based business industry is a growing industry, because when you really think about it the Cashflow Quadrant makes sense and it is scary particularly when you take into account our ageing population, tight property markets and increasing cost of living.
If you do a research on both Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump, they are strong supporters of the home based business industry because it is the most realistically way a majority of people can become “Business Owners”. I don’t want this post to be about the home business industry (or personal franchising as Kiyosaki refers to it as) however to open your mind to opportunities when they do present themselves in relation to thinking in terms of the cashflow quadrant.
If you have any questions in relation to the Cashflow Quandrant or Rich Dad, Poor Dad, please feel free to leave them below, or to get some information about moving into the Right side of the Quadrant stop by Click Here.
I’ve actually been reading an interesting book that I’ve had for a while but never actually read because of its weird title, i.e. The Piano on the Beach. I’ll be upfront and honest; I find it very difficult to relate or prescribe to some of the fluffy, overly sentimental and somewhat tacky images that the home business and leaders industry put together, and the front cover of this book is no exception. However the perspective that the author comes from in this book definitely resinates with me and a majority of people who have gone to university.
One of the themes that I wanted to discuss today is that of action or inaction for that matter. I particularly feel that this relates to business, sales and prospecting in general, as these are the activities that business owners tend to either avoid or not spend enough time on. I was actually just discussing this with a few people on facebook just this week so I thought this was quite timely.
In a way this post is a little bit related to my previous post ‘What to Learn for Internet Marketing Beginners’, however this is more general about inaction or action for that matter. Tony Robbins often says that we make decisions out of avoiding pain or out of pleasure, and within this book this is one area that is discussed. If you really think about this, it is very true, just spend some time reflecting on your decisions and you will generally see that there is a pain avoidance factor or to experience pleasure associated with your decisions.
When you reflect upon your decisions in relation to making phone calls to prospects, following up leads etc, these are always, ALWAYS related to fear. That is of course if you are 100% happy with you income, situation etc, which very few people actually are. Generally the success of your business is always related to your ability to pick up that 300kg hand set, because no matter what business is about relationships. Let’s face it; the only thing that makes the handset that heavy is your imagination and everything that comes flooding through your mind prior to picking it up.
My belief is that while you may be able to make some phone calls, the fact is you precondition yourself to a certain amount of exposure to Fear. What do I mean by that? I mean that you realise that you need to pick up the phone to make a certain income that you are comfortable with, however at some point you believe that you have had too much exposure to fear so you stop calling or avoid picking up the phone.
What does this mean? This means that you are cheating yourself out of making it your best every month/week/day in terms of achieving sales. The best sales people in the world aren’t the ones with the slickest presentation or the most sales education, they are the people who overcome their fears, overcome their comfort zone and continue to push through and ultimately make more calls and receive more no’s than anyone. Ultimately you can go to as many seminars as you like or get as much education but nothing is going to be better to prepare for making sales than actually going out and trying to make them.
So always keep your goals in mind and then go like the wind to taking action and overcoming your fears. Don’t avoid your fears, overcome them and push through your comfort zone.
Suck at Sales? Make sure you check out the 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth on the top right of the page.
Affiliate programs, downlines, recruiting, retailing, systems, I could go one! The home business industry is plagued with endless terms, catch phrases, promises and more failures than successes.
The problem that so many people forget is that the home business industry is about building relationships with people. When you get started within this industry it is extremely easy to build out of desperation and emotions and get in the mindset of exposing the business and getting people in.
You may have some success but I guarantee that if your mindset is set like this then you are going to hit a stumbling block at some stage. Because you are so emotionally driven each turn down is going to be a kick in the guts and its going to feel like your heart is been ripped out of your chest.
Additionally if you are too focused on your own success and not on the success of others it is going to show through in everything you do, including the way you present yourself to potential prospects and it’s not going to attract the people you want to attract either.
The answer to overcoming this phenomenon is to truly focus on delivering value to others and helping others. My personal belief is that if you truly care about the success of others and helping others to achieve their own goals then you will be successful, no matter if it’s in the home business industry or any other business.
If you are serious about your home business then you will commit to your own education and making yourself more valuable to your target market. By becoming more valuable you instantly become more attractive to your potential target market.
It ultimately comes back to the law of give and receive, if you commit to giving your value then you will receive the benefits from that in the future. It wasn’t until that I realised this that success was possible.
One of the keys to effectively marketing online or network marketing is understanding and pursing attraction marketing to ensure your success. Attraction marketing is not about cold calling, prospecting or recruiting, attraction marketing is about drawing qualified leads to you, branding you as a leader and displaying the skills and qualities that is going to bring people into your business.
To learn more about attraction marketing go to http://markblomeley.com/struggling-in-mlm/.
© Mark Blomeley. Say something clever here. Or not. You decide.
